Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa): Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues (ELSI) Collaborative Centers (U54) | RFA RM 16 014

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA RM 16 014

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding opportunity titled "Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa): Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues (ELSI) Collaborative Centers (U54)" (Funding Opportunity Number RFA-RM-16-014) is a discretionary grant program designed to build coordinated, multi-country research capacity focused on the ethical, legal, and societal dimensions of human genomics research in Africa. The program sits within the broader H3Africa initiative and aims to ensure that as genomic and biobanking research expands across the continent, the accompanying ethical governance, legal frameworks, and community-centered social science evidence keep pace with the scientific advances. The announcement emphasizes not only understanding ELSI challenges, but also producing insights and approaches that are relevant across multiple African settings rather than being limited to a single site or a narrow local context.

This opportunity supports the establishment of "Collaborative Centers" using the U54 cooperative agreement mechanism, which typically means NIH expects substantial involvement in the stewardship of the program compared to a standard research project grant. The cooperative agreement structure is meant to foster active coordination, shared standards, and cross-project integration so that funded teams can collectively generate broader, more generalizable outcomes. In practice, the FOA is looking for a center-like structure that links several projects together under an overarching partnership, enabling shared methods, shared governance, and collective outputs that would be difficult for any one project or institution to achieve alone.

A central feature of the FOA is that each award is expected to support a network of 3 to 5 collaborating research projects distributed across at least three African institutions. The intent is continental or cross-regional collaboration: projects should be connected in a way that allows comparative analysis, harmonized data collection where appropriate, and shared learning across diverse legal systems, cultures, languages, and health research infrastructures. The highest priority is given to projects that tackle new or emerging ELSI issues arising from modern genomics, including the real-world challenges that come with generating, storing, sharing, and reusing genomic and phenotypic data and biospecimens across borders and over time. The FOA highlights bioethical, legal, and social science analyses, signaling that it expects rigorous interdisciplinary work that is both theoretically grounded and operationally useful for researchers, ethics committees, policymakers, and communities.

The research scope is framed broadly as the ethical, legal, and societal issues of human genome research "across the African continent," with a particular emphasis on issues that affect multiple communities. That phrasing matters because it pushes applicants to go beyond single-site ethics descriptions and instead address questions with wider applicability, such as consent models in multi-lingual contexts, governance for secondary use of samples and data, benefit sharing, community engagement in genomics, privacy and identifiability risks in genetic data, culturally appropriate communication of genomic findings, and the implications of varying national regulations for cross-border collaboration. It also implies interest in studying how emerging technologies and data-sharing practices interact with existing norms and policies, and in producing guidance, tools, or evidence that can be adopted or adapted across different African research environments.

Eligibility is structured to prioritize African leadership and institutional participation. Non-U.S. entities (foreign organizations and foreign institutions) are explicitly eligible to apply, which aligns with the goal of supporting Africa-based collaborative centers. At the same time, the FOA makes a clear distinction that non-domestic (non-U.S.) components of U.S. organizations are not eligible to apply, meaning a U.S. institution cannot apply through its overseas branch as the applicant organization. Even so, foreign components as defined by the NIH Grants Policy Statement are allowed, which generally means that parts of a project can be conducted outside the U.S. under NIH rules when appropriately justified and structured. Overall, the eligibility language reinforces that the primary applicant and core partnership should be grounded in African institutions, while still permitting collaboration that may involve components or partners beyond national borders when it strengthens the work.

From the administrative details provided, this FOA was issued by the NIH, uses the cooperative agreement funding instrument, and is categorized under health research (CFDA 93.310). The original closing date was November 15, 2016, and the maximum award amount listed is $500,000 (award ceiling). While the number of expected awards is not specified in the provided text, the program structure suggests NIH intended to fund a limited number of multi-project centers that can demonstrate real collaborative synergy and a credible plan for producing deliverables that influence practice and policy around genomics research ethics in Africa. In short, the opportunity is designed to create durable, multi-institutional ELSI research hubs that can address continent-spanning challenges in genomics with strong interdisciplinary methods, coordinated governance, and outputs that help shape ethical and legally sound genomic science across Africa.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa): Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues (ELSI) Collaborative Centers (U54)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.310.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2016-08-09.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2016-11-15. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $500,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

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